{"quotes":[{"text":"Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.","author":"Pawan Mishra","tags":["aspiring-writers","books","creative-people","creative-process","creative-writing","creativity","fiction","fundamentals-of-creative-writing","fundamentals-of-writing","literature","on-writing","power-of-words","on-writing","reading","short-story","stories","story-writing","storytelling","tips-on-writing","write","writers","writing","writing-advice","writing-craft","writing-fiction","writing-from-the-heart","writing-ideas","writing-style"],"id":549,"author_id":"Pawan+Mishra"},{"text":"I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.","author":"Silas House","tags":["story","writing","writing-craft"],"id":2666,"author_id":"Silas+House"},{"text":"The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world.","author":"Phillip Lopate","tags":["wisdom","writing-advice","writing-craft"],"id":5650,"author_id":"Phillip+Lopate"},{"text":"Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.","author":"Amy Joy","tags":["writing","writing-advice","writing-craft","writing-process-writing-advice"],"id":6181,"author_id":"Amy+Joy"},{"text":"The good writing ideas don’t have to be about political turmoil, mass killings, capitalism, racism, injustice, etc. Find that one idea that has deep roots in your heart.","author":"Pawan Mishra","tags":["aspiring-writers","books","creative-people","creative-process","creative-writing","creativity","fiction","fundamentals-of-creative-writing","fundamentals-of-writing","literature","on-writing","power-of-words","on-writing","reading","short-story","stories","story-writing","storytelling","tips-on-writing","write","writers","writing","writing-advice","writing-craft","writing-fiction","writing-from-the-heart","writing-style"],"id":6876,"author_id":"Pawan+Mishra"},{"text":"Bulldogs are wonderful creatures to include in books. Besides their adorable bulldogishness, they provide the writer with a rare chance to use forms of the verb 'snuffle.","author":"Rachelle McCalla","tags":["bulldogs","snuffle","writing","writing-craft","writing-life"],"id":7110,"author_id":"Rachelle+McCalla"},{"text":"All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb in the lamp. That's the miracle of writing, the place you try to find--when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act.","author":"Anthony Doerr","tags":["writing-craft","writing-process"],"id":7257,"author_id":"Anthony+Doerr"},{"text":"I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t have to walk alone. You can work in an office — I’ve worked in offices for the past 15 years and written five novels while doing it. The creative life is forgiving: You can betray it all you want, again and again, and no matter how many times you do, it will always take you back.","author":"Lev Grossman","tags":["creative-process","creativity","writing","writing-advice","writing-craft"],"id":8390,"author_id":"Lev+Grossman"},{"text":"They say instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of clichés, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising. However, who has not hung on a scripture, a quote, a statement, only to stumble upon the key phrase that brought all things to a turning point? The greatest sermons and speeches were pieced together by illuminating thoughts that powered men to surpass their own commonness. It is the sparkling magic of letters forming words, and those words colliding with passion, that makes statements into wisdom.","author":"Shannon L. Alder","tags":["bits-of-wisdom","brevity-in-emotion","common","communication","connections","emotional-connections","instant-communication","letters","passion","philosophers","positive-thinking","punch","quotes","revelation","scribes","sermons-summarized","simplification","statements","summation-of-thought","technology","thinkers","to-the-point","wisdom","words","writers","writing-craft","writing"],"id":10213,"author_id":"Shannon+L.+Alder"},{"text":"According to Wallace, the expectation that art amuses is a 'poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with,' since it places all of the power with the audience, sometimes breeding resentment on the part of the author. 'I can see it in myself and in other young writers,' he told McCaffery: 'this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.' Wallace expressed his 'hostility' by writing unwieldy sentences, refusing to fulfill readers' expectations, and 'bludgeoning the reader with data'--all strategies he used to wrestle back some of the power held by modern audiences.","author":"Dorothy M. Kennedy","tags":["david-foster-wallace","dfw","writing-advice","writing-craft"],"id":10522,"author_id":"Dorothy+M.+Kennedy"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":394,"pages":40,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}